Being generating and regulating all passions. Universalists consider the
general course of nature, though strangely unheeded, does proclaim with
'most miraculous organ,' that dogmatisers about any such 'figment of
imagination' would, in a rational community, be viewed with the same
feelings of compassion, which, even in these irrational days, are
exhibited towards confirmed lunatics.

The author, while passing an evening with some pleasant people in
Ashton-under-Lyne, heard one of them relate that before the schoolmaster
had made much progress in that _devil-dusted_ neighbourhood, a labouring
man walking out one fine night, saw on the ground a watch, whose ticking
was distinctly audible; but never before having seen anything of the
kind, he thought it a living creature, and full of fear ran back among
his neighbours, exclaiming that he had seen a most marvellous thing, for
which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After
recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his
neighbours, all armed with pokers and other formidable weapons, crept up
to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed it to pieces.

The moral of this anecdote is no mystery. Our clickmitoadist had never
seen watches, knew nothing about watches, and hearing as well as seeing
one for the first time, naturally judged it must be an animal. Readers
who may feel inclined to laugh at his simplicity, should ask themselves
whether, if accustomed to see watches growing upon watch trees, they
would feel more astonished than they usually do when observing crystals
in process of formation, or cocoa-nuts growing upon cocoa-nut trees; and
if as inexperienced with respect to watches, or works of art, more or
less analogous to watches, they would not under his circumstances have
acted very much as he did.